


Insurance Man

by avocadomoon



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Surprise! Your new boyfriend's in the mafia, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26898457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: "Eddie," Richie says, laughing a little, "what the fuck is going on? Are you in the mob?" Eddie doesn't laugh.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 222





	Insurance Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skeilig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A motivating factor](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845981) by [skeilig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig). 



As a kid Eddie wore mostly what his mother gave him to wear, on account of being a small child with no money and also the subject of some deeply fucked up emotional manipulation (Richie hopes, in a very sincerely vengeful way, that Mrs. K is enjoying the daytime talk shows in Hell) but as an adult he wears sport jackets over tailored khakis, collared linen shirts, leather shoes, clothes that are all so expensive they look like shit. _Real_ rich person shit - the kind of stuff that the people with the _real_ money wear to the Hollywood parties Richie hates, the producers and the investors and weird old men that smoke cigars at the back of the restaurant, surrounded by Japanese models. To group dinner at the Jade, Eddie wore an outfit so deceptively ugly that both Bill _and_ Bev made a crack about him coming straight from golf. His suitcases, which he shoves into the back of Richie's rental with the carelessness of a New York cab driver, are genuine TUMI, which Richie only knows because two years ago his manager tried to convince him to spend two thousand dollars on a fucking duffel bag at the duty-free shop in LaGuardia. He also has two cell phones. Richie's first thought is _WAS HE ALREADY HAVING AN AFFAIR!_ and his second is, _I didn't know Dior made iPhone cases._

"Eds," Richie says, attempting to be serious. Eddie looks over from the passenger seat and gives him a skeptical look. "Not that I'm not on board here, but where the fuck are we going again? Also what the fuck are we doing. Two questions, equally important. Take your pick."

"We can go wherever you want to go, bro," Eddie says carefully. 

"I hate that you call me 'bro' now. It weirds me out."

"Buddy," Eddie says. Richie grimaces and changes lanes without signaling. "Dude!"

"I don't like that one either."

"It was shorthand for 'use your fucking turn signal,'" Eddie snaps. "We _can't_ get pulled over." 

Richie looks at him closely, and Eddie looks back down at the phones in his lap. One of them has been gutted already, the SIM card crushed beneath his patent leather heel in the parking lot of the Townhouse, and the other is in airplane mode, which doesn't explain how the fuck he's still managing to text on it. 

"Okay," Richie says, and makes himself look back at the highway, "in the movies when the couple runs away together impulsively, there's usually more smiling, and less shouting. Just saying."

"I'm sorry," Eddie mutters. Richie sees him lock the phone and slide it back into his shirt pocket, out of the corner of his eye. "I'm just - we seriously can't get pulled over right now. I'm not kidding."

"Sure, sure," Richie says, nodding, "makes sense. Totally normal thing to say."

Eddie touches Richie's wrist, wrapping his long fingers around the base of his hand where it rests on the gear shift, and Richie experiences a full-body shudder so encompassing he thinks his hair actually shivers, too. He grips the wheel with his free hand and presses his knee into the side of the door and invents a few new curses inside his head. 

"I'm sorry," Eddie says. Richie takes a deep breath. "I know I'm acting weird."

"Weird? No," Richie says, who only one day ago had been under the impression that Eddie was perfectly content with his straight marriage. Walking back from the quarry, bitching about his face, Eddie stopped Richie on the curb outside of a Sunoco and stuck his tongue down Richie's throat, only to announce thoughtfully after the fact (as Richie realigned the facts of the universe, once more, probably the third or fourth time this week) that he "just wanted to try it." Then he asked Richie if he had plans for the next few weeks, and after Richie frantically said, "no I mean I'll have to make some calls but it's cool like totally I don't know what were you thinking man did you want to get dinner or I don't know don't you live in New York I love New York!" he suggested a road trip. "This is a completely normal reaction to killing a fear monster and making out with your childhood friend. Hey, you weren't lying about being married, were you? Like trying to seem cool next to Bill?"

"Unfortunately, I was not," Eddie says darkly. He sighs. "Her father's a cop. My father-in-law, I mean. Myra's dad."

"Oh," Richie says, strangled. 

"So I was thinking Montreal, just to be safe. But like - whatever you want, I guess. Do you have your passport on you?"

"Uh," Richie says. "No?"

"Never mind, it's not a big deal," Eddie says, and Richie is suddenly unsure of whether he means to imply that they can drive somewhere within the country instead, or if there's something he can do about the passport issue somehow, like he can just pull a blank one out of his fucking designer brand eleven-hundred-dollar suitcase and write in Richie's name with a ballpoint pen. Bam: fixed. "I have some property in Vermont, but Myra knows about that. But we could probably get away with a couple nights, before she realizes I'm there. But it doesn't have running water - full disclosure. Who do you bank with?"

Richie blinks at him. "Uh," he says again. 

"Never mind, never mind," Eddie says, leaning his elbow against the ledge of the window. "I'll take care of it. I have enough for...three weeks, on the outside. That should be enough," he finishes, muttering mostly to himself. 

"Eddie," Richie says, totally and completely lost, "I still don't know which direction I'm supposed to be driving, here."

"Wherever you want, I said!" Eddie says, throwing his hands up in the air. "We're coming up on Skowhegan. Take Highway 2 if you don't want to keep going towards the border."

Richie feels a wild recklessness at the words _towards the border,_ as if this really is a movie, and they really are running away together. But _I just wanted to try it_ is very different from _take me away from my wife and run away to Canada with me_ so Richie probably shouldn't read into it. 

"Eddie," he says, laughing a little, "what the fuck is going on? Are you in the mob?" Eddie doesn't laugh, and Richie's smile falls slowly, his hands tightening on the wheel. Eddie's still holding his wrist tightly, his grip anxious and absentminded, his eyes glued on the window, jaw tight, like he's waiting for bad news. " _Eddie._ "

"I told you guys it was complicated," he says, near-defensive, and Richie blanches. "Look - it's just - I just need to stay away from the city for a few days, we can - you can drop me off somewhere if you don't want to come with me. I'll keep your name out of it, I promise. But Rich, I thought - I mean, the way you were talking, it seemed like - "

"Holy shit," Richie interrupts, taking another look at Eddie, grown-up Eddie, with the clarity of present day, rather than the thirty-years-ago filter he'd been looking at him through for the past week. Eddie with his heavy set brow and serious mouth, Eddie with his expensive clothes and well-groomed hair. Eddie, who has two cell phones, and asked Mike if bringing a gun would help against Pennywise, and they'd all laughed, relieved at the excuse to break the tension, except Eddie hadn't laughed along then either because holy shit it probably wasn't a joke. "You told us you worked in insurance."

"I do," Eddie says heavily. Meaningfully. Richie makes a weird, high-pitched noise. "Listen, I just didn't want you to think - "

"Why are you telling me this while I'm _driving?!_ " Richie interrupts. Eddie's grip tightens again on his wrist, and it occurs to Richie that Eddie might not be aware he's still holding on. "What the fuck?! You waited until we were moving at seventy miles an hour to break this news?!"

"You asked! Just now! You didn't ask before now!" Eddie says. "Watch the road. And don't speed."

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ," Richie says. 

"Look," Eddie says tightly, "I'll tell you everything if you want to know, but I didn't think you would want to know. Most people wouldn't," he says wryly, and Richie looks over at him recklessly, his heart in his throat. "I didn't _lie_ to you guys about anything. I just - it didn't really feel like the time to explain everything, and it's - this all came at a really bad time for me." He sounds scraped thin and desperate, wobbly around the edges. Richie swallows hard. "There's some stuff going on that I couldn't really just - abandon, but I _had_ to leave, obviously, I had to come back for you guys, so they're not going to be...happy to see me for awhile. To say the least. And things with Myra were getting worse, so I - "

"Myra, whose father is a cop," Richie says thinly, laughing anxiously. 

"Not a good one," Eddie says darkly. "Seriously, Rich, watch your speed. There are speed traps all over this interstate."

Richie vengefully hits the cruise control button. "Eddie," he says, forcing calm into his voice with no small amount of effort, "where are we going. What the fuck are we doing. Tell me the fucking truth, right now."

Eddie shakes his head. "It has to be your decision, Rich. I can't get you involved if you don't - "

"Shut up," Richie says furiously. "Eds, look at me," he says, and Eddie does, his eyes wide and sad in his face. "Tell me what you _want._ Tell me the truth."

Eddie swallows, and Richie remembers the eerie feeling of seeing him again at the restaurant, walking in with his hands waving, already scolding the waitress before he'd even sat down. He'd been looking at grown-up Eddie and remembering kid Eddie and feeling gut punched, roughed up by the memory itself of the way he felt, the things he'd wanted, the shame that followed him around for years even though the memories themselves were stolen. Here and now, grown-up Eddie is a different creature, Richie realizes for the first time, still recognizably the end result of the person Richie had known and loved all those years ago - six-year-old Eddie, fingerpainting next to Richie in art class, thirteen-year-old Eddie, falling asleep against Richie's arm in the field behind Mike's house, and seventeen-year-old Eddie, throwing a baseball against the side of Richie's garage and catching it with his bare hand. He saw that Eddie first, right away, but now Richie looks and sees the new Eddie, the one who doesn't smile quite as easily, who's still holding onto Richie's wrist with a tightness that he realizes now is desperation. He has a piercing in his left ear that's grown over, but Richie can still see the scar, and there's a heaviness to his posture that he'd previously thought was because of Derry, but maybe it isn't. His jokes are a little more pointed, a little sharper than they'd been when he was a kid. His hands are wide and callused in strange places and he still makes Richie's skin tingle and his heart race, but he kisses like a frat boy. (Richie thought it was charming, twelve hours ago. And maybe it still is.)

"I want," Eddie says carefully, "to go to Montreal with you. I want to tell you about my life."

Richie blinks at the road, which is blurry through some really embarrassing tears. He can't fucking cry about that in front of Eddie, who is suddenly ten times scarier and cooler than Richie had thought an hour ago, and considering how scary and cool Eddie's always been, that's really saying something. "Alright."

"But Rich, I can't let you get involved if you don't - "

"Eds, Jesus fuck, shut up," Richie says, unwrapping his fingers from the gear shift and dislodging Eddie's hand. He sees Eddie twitch, but his face smooths out as Richie turns his over and threads their fingers together. "Just. Real quick question. We can talk about the details later, but. Can I just. Do you have a gun on you right now?"

Eddie twitches again. 

"Holy fuck, Eddie!"

"Listen, we grew up in rural Maine, don't act like this is the first time you've held hands with a gun owner," Eddie says. 

"What kind of gun is it?"

"I - why is that important?"

"Because I want to fucking know!" Richie says, on the edge of some real hysteria. The reality of the world, which has been a bit iffy and hysterical ever since the moment Richie picked up Mike's call, now feels a little too-bright and colorful, as if he's somehow slid sideways into an alternate universe. Like one of the Star Trek ones, where everything's Technicolor. The blurry grass along the highway is a little too green, the A/C from the vents a little too crisp. Richie feels like yelling, laughing, like kissing Eddie until they're both crying, _and_ sort of like he wants to keep driving this car until they hit the ocean, all at the same time. A real _Thelma and Louise_ feeling - where's a good cliff, when you need one? 

"It's just a P398," Eddie says. "Nothing special."

Richie laughs again, wondering absently if he's still in the Deadlights, maybe. It would explain a few things. 

"It's not even loaded. Listen, Rich," Eddie says, squeezing Richie's hand, "if we're doing this I need to know a few things right away. Seriously, who do you bank with?"

"Uh," Richie says, to cover the fact that he truly doesn't know. "I have a debit card."

Eddie grimaces. "That won't work. Where's your phone?"

Richie gestures vaguely, which Eddie takes to mean 'please dig through my jacket pockets while Richie tries not to hyperventilate.' The accidental brush of his hands against the bare skin of Richie's neck really accentuates the experience. "Are you - seriously, Eds, it's right there - no not that pocket, the other - yeah. Jesus. Eds, are you like, is it the cops you're running from, or - "

"It's both," Eddie says with another grimace, like this is just an annoying detail or something and not a complete realignment of everything Richie thought was true about the universe, "it's sort of - like, the same thing. You've seen _The Sopranos_ , right?"

"Of course I've fucking seen _The Sopranos_ , who hasn't seen _The Sopranos_?" Richie asks, frenzied. 

"You remember the dirty cop who commits suicide? Season five?"

"Eddie I'm gonna fucking lose it. Are you trying to tell me that your life is _The Departed_? Is your father-in-law like, Ray fucking Liotta?"

"I mean, kind of," Eddie says, sitting back in his seat with Richie's phone in his hand, triumphant. "Do you use a banking app on this thing? Never mind. I'm deleting it. You better not have your location on, even you can't be that stupid."

Richie stares at him. "Don't you need my - "

"It's 7843. Right? The last four numbers of your landline when you were a kid. You used it as your locker combo for years." Eddie's face turns triumphant, as the phone unlocks. "You idiot. That's a terrible password."

Richie feels oddly choked up again. "I use it for my email too," he says. "And the security code to get into my condo."

Eddie looks at him with such sharp, fond exasperation that Richie has to look away, for fear he'll start crying again. "I'm gonna fix that," he says, and Richie thinks to himself, frantic and incredulous and nearly incoherent with terrified joy, _I've been so lost without you._ "Seriously, do you have your passport on you?"

"No," Richie says, "seriously. Believe it or not, I was not planning on leaving the country on this trip." He actually hadn't been planning on coming back at all, to be truthful. All of them had thrown themselves down into the depths of Neibolt with a similar, desperate resignation. On some level, Richie figures they'd all sort of thought they'd end up back there one day, amnesia or not - and in that sense, maybe Eddie's foray into vaguely-defined, possibly-organized crime makes a little more sense. Richie has certainly lived the last twenty-seven years of his life with very little thought or foreplanning. Sort of a _fuck it, why not_ general life outlook that's definitely taken him down some weird roads once or twice or three dozen times. 

"Okay. That's fine," Eddie says calmly. "We'll stop by the embassy. Did you use a card to rent this car?"

"Uh, yeah," says Richie, who hasn't handled his own travel details in ten years. It's a solid hypothesis, though, he doesn't think his assistant was marching down to the Enterprise offices in Bangor to pay them in cash. "Is that...a problem?"

"No, not yet," Eddie replies ominously. "We have some lead time to work with, but we have to be careful about it. Rich, listen." He touches Richie's arm again, his demeanor serious and grave, like it'd been outside the gas station, holding Richie's face with both of his hands. The way he'd said it, _is this okay? I just wanted to try it,_ Richie will probably remember for the rest of his life. However the long that is, which apparently is still in question. "You say the word, and we're done. You understand? If it's too much, or whatever, you just tell me and I'll take care of it. There's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you away from it all. And I mean that. It's my problem, not yours."

Richie laughs again, still on the edge of hysteria, but with a slowly descending calm that makes his hands feel steady for the first time since touching down in Maine seven days ago. "Your problem?" he says, thinking _your problems are my problems. I want all your fucking problems. I want to roll around in your problems until they're mine too, until everyone in the world can see that_ you're _my fucking problem and that's the end of it._ "Eddie. I saw you die in the Deadlights."

Eddie's face goes slack. 

"I felt your blood on my hands. I could taste it in the back of my mouth. I held you as you died." Richie swallows, and swears he can still taste it. Copper and dirt and grime between his molars. "I have questions and I need you to answer them, but this is where I'm coming from, Eds. You get me? You're alive and I'm alive and we're driving to Montreal. That's it." Richie shrugs, and finds himself grinning. Scary, cool, and a dream come true. Sort of everything he didn't know he'd been missing, all these years. "Fuck it. Where else do you have property?"

Eddie laughs, a little watery. His hands shake a little, as he slides Richie's phone back into his pocket. "A few places."

"Vancouver? I like Vancouver. I lived there for a year, when I was working on _Godiva's._ "

"Terrible fucking show," Eddie says. He looks at Richie sidelong, his mouth twitching. "I watched every episode."

Richie grins painfully at the windshield, his heart hammering in his chest. "I won a Leo Award for that, you know. They're like the Canadian Oscars."

"It was a slow year," Eddie says, taking Richie's hand again. "I can see why they took pity on you." 

Richie swallows, squeezing Eddie's fingers. His skin is warm and dry - no clammy palms, no weird sweat or too-tight grip. (Not that Richie would ever object to being held too tightly, anyway.) The ideal hand holder. He doesn't know why he's surprised. "Is Myra...is she, like, real?"

"You mean, does she exist?" Eddie asks dryly. "Yes."

"No, I mean - was it real," Richie says, with difficulty. "Are you leaving her for me? Is what I'm trying to ask."

Eddie takes a deep breath. "Yes," he says, and Richie jerks the wheel involuntarily, his knee jittering against the door. "And no. Yes and no."

"Okay, thanks. That clears it up," Richie says. 

"Yes, I'm leaving her. No, it's not for you. But yes, it's also for you. And no, it wasn't real. But it also was," Eddie says. He squints his eyes at Richie. "I know it doesn't make sense. But...it's the truth. So."

"Okay," Richie says, nodding quickly. "Sure. Sure. Okay."

Slowly, Eddie tugs Richie's hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of Richie's knuckles. Richie feels like he might be having a slow-motion heart attack of some kind, or possibly a stroke. "You can ask me all the questions you want, but I can't promise my answers will make sense. That's all I've got, Richie. I'll give you what I have, but it's all I've got."

Richie doesn't reply, thinking again about Eddie's serious face, outlined in soft light on the other side of the room at the restaurant. Does he know who he's sitting in the car with? Yes and no. So maybe Richie understands. 

"Did you really watch my show?" he asks, after a second. "I had a producing credit on it, you know. I was really proud of myself."

"I did," Eddie says. He pauses, significantly. "I didn't remember you, but I think my mother did. At least a little. She hated when I put it on. We used to fight about it all the time."

Richie feels a perverse sense of pride about that, that even through amnesia and a completely separate life, far away from Eddie's, he'd still managed to piss off Sonia Kaspbrak. That's talent, right there. "That's amazing. Truly incredible, Eds."

"If I'd remembered," Eddie starts, trailing off wistfully. "Everything would've been different."

Richie can't speak, so he squeezes Eddie's hand. The road spins out before them, blank and empty and ominous. 

"But we'll fix it," Eddie says. He blinks in the next second, and the moment is gone. "How much cash do you have on you?"

"Four, maybe five hundred," Richie says easily, uncaring. "Is that enough?"

"It'll have to be," Eddie says grimly. "Did you tell any of the others we were leaving?"

Richie had, in fact, texted them in a separate thread that morning so that nobody would freak out and think they were dead or something. They'd all been a little clingy, and understandably so, hanging around their decrepit motel, waiting for Mike to get discharged from the hospital so they could all leave. He feels a little bad about taking off early, but not that bad. "I think they'll understand," he says. 

"Yeah," Eddie says shortly. "And anyway, I told Mike already, so he can explain it if they're worried about us. It should be fine."

Richie nearly chokes. "You told _Mike?_ " he asks, incredulously. Of all the Losers, that would've been Richie's very last choice, probably. 

"He's a good guy," Eddie says defensively. "On the level, you know. He gets it."

"Gets it, like _gets it?_ " Richie continues, his universe realigning once again. "What do you mean, does he - is everyone a fucking criminal, now?"

"Shut up, Richie. That's his business," Eddie says with a scowl. "It's not polite to ask people that shit. You're gonna have to learn how to be a little more subtle."

Richie gapes at him, jaw slack. 

"Well, I'll help you with that too," Eddie says, in a tone that he probably means to be reassuring. Richie laughs again, on the wrong side of manic, and turns back to the road. "Hey - does this car have GPS?"

"Jesus, are you just asking that _now?_ "

"What am I, a spy? Gimme a break," Eddie says. "I was just asking. Trying to be careful and everything, fuck me. Jesus."

"Do you have aspirin in one of your fucking million dollar bags, Eds?" Richie asks, rubbing his forehead. "I need one. Go digging, Eddie Montana."

"Fuck you," Eddie says. "I don't _sell drugs._ "

Somehow, Richie already knew that. Like he was half-asking just to be sure, you know - peace of mind - but he did already know that. Sort of. Mostly. "Not even a little?"

"I told you, I'm in _insurance_ ," Eddie says, which is absolutely not reassuring in the least. He rolls up his sleeves, a gesture almost comically hot, and climbs over the console to the backseat to dig through one of the duffels. "Watch the road, and not my ass, please."

"Okay, well, no promises," Richie says.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
